


Everything changed, but Ikebukuro didn't

by guuzenkamo



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 14:48:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4526151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guuzenkamo/pseuds/guuzenkamo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shizuo, Izaya and the awful finality of death</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything changed, but Ikebukuro didn't

_Not much left in this world anymore._

The words hummed in his mind like a mantra, and they didn’t even belong to him. He wanted to swat them away like a fly, but he had never been good at controlling what was inside him. They would come over him like a wave of heat, and he learned to live with it, letting them twist his mind until they deemed it enough. Sooner or later these words would disappear, too. Everything else seemed to.

“Looks like it’ll rain soon,” Tom said, pausing his feet for a moment to consider something. 

Shizuo trudged after Tom, and when the meaning of _his_ words finally reached him, he slowly looked up at the sky. The heavy clouds threatened to vomit buckets of rain any moment now, but it didn’t make a difference. They had things to do, people to break. He couldn’t wait until they arrived to their destination, anger serving as a much-needed break from the numbness.

“Vorona wrote to me,” Shizuo said after a while, just to break away from the annoying vortex of words in his mind. “She says being back in Russia is good.”

“Who would have thought?” Tom let out a laugh, and Shizuo flinched a little. “I mean, you hear all those bad things about Russia, right?” Tom was quick to add, throwing a worried look at him. 

“Right,” Shizuo echoed. “But it’s bad everywhere.”

Tom looked like he wanted to disagree, but he knew better. 

 

!

 

It was a good dream, first in so many nights. He was running after him through busy streets and sidewalks, ducking under the parlors, barely turning to avoid a yawning pedestrian. All he was focused in on was the furry hem of the man’s coat right in front of him, teasing through the gray crowd, fluttering in the wind like a flag of war. 

He knew it was a dream when he couldn’t form a roar from within his throat. He wanted to stop and carve something from the crumbling world around him that he could hurl at the runner, but the man would surely slip away in the time that it took to form a grip with his melting hands. He’d disappear just like he disappeared everywhere else.

The alarm cut through his mind like a knife, instantly silenced by the slam of his extended hand. Shizuo slowly rose, blinking, breaking the veil of sleep in his eyes. Third purchase this month, he plucked out the small shards of plastic and glass from the skin of his left hand, wondering if he should bother with alarms anymore. What would replace it, though? He could set one on his phone, but then he’d wake to a shattered phone, and phones were more expensive.

Maybe it wasn’t a good dream after all, if it ended like the others.

 

!

 

“I saw him in my dream again,” Shizuo said, grabbing a plate of chocolate cake from the buffet. Tom was a few steps ahead, filling his tray with food that was more adequate for breakfast.

“Shinra?” Tom asked carefully, turning just enough to take a quick look at him. 

“No, Izaya.”

“Ah,” Tom let out, no surprise in the sound. “Did you finally catch him?” he asked, when they assumed their seats at the table.

“No,” Shizuo poked his cake with a fork. The strawberry on top of the brown layer looked frozen and stale, matching the way he felt. “I never catch him.”

“Must be irritating,” Tom offered sympathetically. “He doesn’t leave you alone even in your dreams, even after all these years.”

No, the dreams were good, Shizuo thought. They reminded him of how things used to be, and he could barely remember why he hated it so much back then. These feelings were clear-cut in his mind, but he couldn’t bring them to life by wording them. What was the point, anyway? It’d only give them more power if he were to shape them into something concrete.

“Yeah,” Shizuo said, his mouth full of cake that was overly sweet. “I can’t stand it.”

“You break your alarm again?” 

Shizuo looked at his bandaged hand.

“Yeah.”

“You should put it somewhere out of reach.”

That would work. Shizuo thought about it, but shelved the suggestion. Waking up to pain was better than the alternative.

 

!

 

For a whole full second, he thought his heart had disappeared from his chest. Like a tiny black hole formed where his heart was, empty, black and sucking in everything around it. Vorona had once told him about black holes, and it scared the hell out of him at the time.

Izaya was across the street, on the sidewalk in front of Russia Sushi with Simon towering over him. It had to be Izaya. He couldn’t see the man’s face, but the skinny frame and the haircut, and the _smell_ , everything screamed Izaya. He didn’t know why Izaya had to be dressed in something else entirely, why every single thing in the world had to change, even hard constants like that fur-coat. He almost doubted his own eyes when he saw the black jeans and a dark-brown sweater over a white shirt, but his senses never lied. 

“ _Izaya_!” he yelled, raising his voice to a volume that he had long forgotten he could exercise. The sound echoed through the street, tearing through the air, and the man turned around.

He should have been happy to see those amused eyes. Wasn’t he desperate for something that never changed? Shizuo searched for the usual fit of rage that came with identifying the flea in the area, but it was nowhere to be found. He wanted Izaya to run, so he could chase him again like before, like in the dreams. But the smiling man stood still, waving his hand in a slow motion. 

“Shizu-o!” Simon exclaimed and spread his big arms in a greeting. “Eat sushi?”

 

!

 

They sat at one of the smallest tables in Russia Sushi. It must have been some sort of joke on Simon’s part, because the place was nearly empty and there was no reason for them to cram themselves into a tight corner where Shizuo’s elbows kept hitting the window frame.

Simon stood to the side, conversing with Izaya in quiet murmurs of Russian. Shizuo had interrupted their conversation when he walked over to them, and he didn’t want them to stop on his behalf. He sat still, hands folded on his knees, staring at the man in front of himself. 

Of course, Izaya looked older — it had been five years after all. Shizuo wanted to tease him about the small wrinkles around the eyes, knowing how much Izaya hated the concept of aging. He wanted to ask about the thin line of a scar across the cheekbone he had never seen before, but he knew it’d be something that’d make him angry, something sketchy and probably the flea’s own fault for messing with something dangerous. 

He wanted to ask about why Izaya didn’t come to the funeral.

Izaya’s voice in Russian was no different from the way he spoke in Japanese, unlike Simon who sounded like an entirely different person. He spoke with the same intonation, tugging on the syllables with the same rhythm and the same lilting melody. It used to irritate him, but that day he could only drink in every phantom of the old days, of the way things used to be.

Things couldn’t be more different, though. If there was any more proof needed, the two of them sitting at the same table without making moves to harm each other was the final nail to it, the _quod erat demonstrandum_ , if Shizuo was to repeat the complicated words Vorona used to finish her own assertions and proofs.

“Where’s the murder in your eyes, Shizu-chan?” Izaya asked when Simon left them alone. He smiled wider, revealing teeth that Shizuo shouldn’t be able to see in a normal person’s smile.

“I,” he stuttered, then shook his head. This wasn’t what he wanted to talk about. “I’m okay. Where have you been? You disappeared after—” 

“Around,” Izaya shrugged. “Has Ikebukuro been better without me?”

“No,” Shizuo said, words sharp in his throat. “Not much changed.”

 _Everything_ changed, but Ikebukuro didn’t.

Izaya looked at him with a victorious smile. Shizuo knew what the smirk was about; for years Izaya had tried to drill it into Shizuo’s head that he couldn’t be held responsible for Ikebukuro’s fires. The world moved forward with or without Izaya’s involvement.

But Shizuo couldn’t care less about Ikebukuro now.

“Shinra—”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Izaya hissed to cut him short, life disappearing from the smiling eyes. “ _Don’t_ bring that up.” 

It took half a second for Izaya to smooth his expression back into the usual lines of a smile. Silence hovered over them, and Shizuo felt helpless. He supposed he was too optimistic, too naive. It wasn’t like Izaya was going to have a heart-to-heart with an old enemy like him.

“Are you back now?” he asked instead.

 _Please say yes_ , he thought, desperate for _something_ to go back to normal. His face remained locked under the twist of a frown, betraying none of those thoughts.

"You stopped dying your hair,” Izaya said, a small hint of disappointment underneath the lowered lashes. He didn't appear to notice Shizuo's question, or he preferred to ignore it.

“Oh,” Shizuo caught the glimpse of the unruly strands of brown hair in the corner of his eyes. “Yeah.”

“You look broken, Shizu-chan,” Izaya drawled. His cold expression hadn't flickered once during the exchange. “Maybe you should have been the one to die.”

Shizuo swallowed, the meaning sinking, slow and steady, to settle somewhere in the knot of his stomach. 

“Y-Yeah,” he said. “I’d like that.”

 

!

 

Shizuo chewed down on the stale sandwich he bought yesterday, somehow fitting himself on the small windowsill of the only window in his apartment. His knees complained from the strain of being locked too close together, but for some forgotten reason he decided he wanted to see the dawn that day. 

When he finally managed to arrange himself, his plate and the pack of cigarettes, there was a knock on the door that he was half-certain didn’t actually happen. It was dead silent at his place, but his mind had been unreliable lately, and no one would come visit him at such an early hour of a Sunday morning, not even the old lady that rented him this tight little corner of an apartment. 

He cursed when the knock came again, untangling himself out of his position and shuffling his feet to the door.

“You lied to me,” Izaya said accusingly when he opened the door. “Everything is different.”

Shizuo blinked. “Really?”

“Yes!” Izaya said. “They fixed the sidewalk, the vending machine down the block and the telephone pole off the football stadium.”

The casualties of their very first skirmish, Shizuo realized. 

“Ah. Yeah, they did that a while ago.”

“I hate change,” Izaya blurted a confession, glancing away. 

“Well,” Shizuo paused, unsure of what to say. “The vending machine by Simon’s place is still broken.”

He was rewarded with an angry look, and Izaya swirled on his heels to leave. Shizuo shut the door behind himself, silently following the man.

 

!

 

They scrutinized the broken glass, Izaya squatting down and Shizuo standing tall, a cigarette between his lips. The smoke drifted into the open gray sky, and Shizuo estimated the sun was going to come up in around twenty minutes. 

The vending machine was still flipped upside down, more than half of it reduced into a mess of shattered glass and warped metal. 

“They shouldn’t fix these things,” Izaya said, playing with a loose piece. It seemed sharp enough to pierce skin, but Izaya didn’t seem to care. “They’re proof a monster like you exists.”

Ah, that’s what it was about. Shizuo thought on the idea, a little too disconnected from reality to form any protest.

“Stay,” he blurted instead, gnashing his teeth together until it hurt. “Stay in ‘bukuro.”

Izaya got up to give the machine a small kick. The metal screeched, the last of the glass crumbling apart. He turned around, and Shizuo saw the reflection of his own despair inside his eyes.

“Let’s get drunk,” he said and headed down the street.

“No,” Shizuo refused, and Izaya froze in his step. “I was gonna watch the dawn.”

Izaya turned in profile, contemplating the idea. “We can watch the dawn,” he decided after moments of silence. “But we get drunk after.”

 

!

 

They sneaked on top of their old school, the grounds of Raira Academy desolate and quiet. 

The wind blew through Shizuo’s shirt, and once the sun came up, he sprawled out on the concrete, remembering the old days of coming up here on his own during the lunch-break. The sun rays warmed his bones, penetrating through the layer of clothing and skin.

Izaya chose to sit on the highest place, looking down on him from afar, but Shizuo didn’t care. He imagined the ring of the bell, the crowd clamoring outside, the frustrated teachers yelling to restrain the wild students.

There was a soft thump of feet hitting the ground, and he opened one eye to watch Izaya walk over to lie down beside him. Shizuo wondered if someone like Izaya could appreciate the stretch of the pale blue sky above. It was depressingly quiet, when even the blackbirds that shared the roof with them were soundless.

This was supposed to be good, this was something. At least some bits of the past were present, at least Izaya was still alive. Pain unfurled in his chest, chipping away at his hopes of finding peace up here, because apparently phantoms of the past didn’t color things any brighter.

“Not much left in this world anymore,” Shizuo managed to say, unclenching his teeth. The words came out funny, like he had some kind of accent in Japanese, and his jaw whined from the sudden strain of speech.

“ _That’s_ your grand take-away?” Izaya laughed bitter. 

“Not mine,” Shizuo said, and Izaya jerked up-right.

“Whose then?” he asked, tone unstable.

Shizuo closed his eyes, wondering why he brought it up. It was cold, too cold even for October.

“ _Whose_?”

 

!

 

Izaya couldn’t hold liquor for shit.

His head lied lifeless against Shizuo’s shoulder, and Shizuo thought about having to wash his shirt later. He reached for a napkin to wipe Izaya’s lips, hoping that that was the last of the drool.

They’d drunk at this bar for hours, mostly in dark silence, sometimes bringing up an old anecdote from the days that felt like something from a previous life. “We’re reincarnated,” Izaya joked when he voiced those thoughts. “In a real hellhole,” Shizuo added in a quieter voice.

He thought Izaya had passed out, but with a quiet half-hiccup, half-whimper, Izaya raised his head to look up at him. “I killed him,” he said, fluttering his eyelashes in blinks that flicked off tiny beads of something that resembled tears.

The words were an echo of Shizuo’s own thoughts, and his heart felt like falling apart. 

“Shut the fuck up,” he growled, cursing him for bringing that up. 

“I did,” Izaya insisted. He burrowed his head deeper into Shizuo’s shirt, as if that would help anything. “I set in motion the chain of events that resulted in his death.”

“I said, shut up,” Shizuo pleaded. He was broken, Izaya was broken, there was no need to break things any further. “ _You_ veto’d this shit.”

“You should’ve died in his stead,” Izaya muffled into his chest. “It’s unfair is what this is. Monsters like you get to out-live everyone.”

“I’m sorry,” Shizuo said, and he really was.

 

!

 

“We’re survivors,” Izaya said in the morning.

He lied half-naked in Shizuo’s bed, and Shizuo couldn’t remember the last time he woke up to someone else’s presence. Izaya’s body was sharp against his, pressed in all the right spots to make Shizuo distantly wonder if he should have abandoned reason last night, taking advantage of the fact that the flea came onto him. He was drunk out of his mind though, so Shizuo stuffed him inside the covers and left him as was. For half an hour after Izaya slurred threats of violence, apparently incapable of getting his head around the fact that he was turned down by a monster.

“Survivors?” he asked, shoving the flea off. Izaya withdrew his arm, only to get up and straddle him, the sudden bounce of weight punching the air out of Shizuo’s lungs.

“Yes,” Izaya nodded, the dawn of a new idea forming in his eyes. “I am too much of a coward to kill myself. You are too dumb to actually consider it. That makes us survivors. The world cannot kill us. _We_ cannot kill ourselves. We can’t kill each other, either, as the years of struggle have showed us.” He poked at Shizuo’s sternum as if to test the frailty of it. 

Except Shizuo did once consider it, even if it was a half-hearted thought that died before it formed into anything coherent. He could never do something like that to Kasuka.

He thought about _surviving_ and tugged the hem of Izaya’s t-shirt, pulling it down. He didn’t need to see so much skin; Izaya looked indecent enough without pants, and Shizuo wasn’t a saint.

“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “I don’t see us dying.”

“I wish you did,” Izaya murmured, tracing the finger up to his Adam’s apple. Shizuo swallowed, and Izaya followed the movement up and down. “Now that I’m more or less sober, will you finally fuck me?”

“No,” Shizuo said, catching Izaya’s hand and putting it aside. “You’re not yourself. This is desperation.”

“And?” 

“What do you mean, ‘and’?” Shizuo grew irritated. “People shouldn’t do this shit when they’re broken.”

Izaya’s blithe laugh filled the room, and Shizuo felt a little less dead. 

“People do this best _when_ they’re broken,” Izaya whispered somewhere above his ear, leaning forward to wrap his arms around him in a cold, trembling embrace.

Shizuo thought on it twice, then once again for safety measure before surrendering. 

He did just about everything else in this broken mental state, so why would this be an exception?

 

!

 

“Is it strength or weakness to kill yourself?”

The question lingered in the air, and Shizuo blinked, surprised that he was the one who asked it. It seemed like the wrong kind of place to bring this up.

Izaya hugged his knees. He was crouched over the wilting flowers, staring at the gravestone, but the intensity of his gaze made it seem like he was looking beyond the black marble and maybe even through the ground behind it.

“I don’t have an answer,” he finally said, and Shizuo thought his lips were a shade too blue. “It’s neither in Shinra’s case, if that’s what you’re wondering about.”

“I see,” Shizuo said, shoving his stiff hands deeper into the pockets of his coat.

It took him two months to convince Izaya to come here, so the world around them was decaying under the cold spell of December.

“So I couldn’t have stopped him,” Shizuo said, and Izaya turned to throw him a dismal look.

“Get over yourself,” he sneered. “And stop acting so fucking human.”

Shizuo huffed air, watching the mist of his breath disperse. 

“It didn’t make me feel better,” Izaya said, getting up on his feet. “You lied to me again, Shizu-chan.”

“I didn’t say it'd make you feel better,” Shizuo said defensively. “I said it had to be done.”

 

!

 

At night, Izaya sometimes bit him to hold down the cry that wanted to break out from his throat. Shizuo accepted the pain, because he never felt alive anymore unless Izaya was around.

In return, Shizuo made him run through the city so he could chase him like he used to.

**Author's Note:**

> (Izaya's games forever reunited Celty and her head, making her disappear from the world, and Shinra didn't have a reason to live past that point)


End file.
